Nightmare
by Bellalyse Winchester
Summary: Oneshot. Wishful thinking as an alternate scenario for episodes 3.9 and 3.10. Helen has a nightmare and doesn't wake up.


Helen Cutter barely acknowledged the form behind her as she worked for several moments; she wasn't surprised if one of her soldiers entered the room while she was working. It was only when she turned slightly to the right, saw the man out of the corner of her eye, that she jumped. The man seemed amused. He would.

"Didn't expect me?" he asked in that glorious Scottish accent-Helen had no great love for her husband, despite what she could claim, but that accent was…she used to melt whenever she heard him speak, back before she left for her great mission. "I suppose I can't blame you."

"Nick," Helen said, hoping her voice sounded braver than she felt. She turned, an easy, spiteful smile dancing on her lips. "It's good to see you. How does it feel, to die?-I mean, if you don't mind my asking."

Her husband smirked a little. Was he playing with her? Was it all just a dream-it had to be, of course. Men didn't just come back to life. Not after you shoot them at point-blank range.

"Would you like to try it? Death?" Nick stepped closer and she leaned back onto her lab table, pushing herself back until she slid up onto the table. She snatched up the first thing her fingers came into contact with-a pen. Cutter was before her in an instant, shaking his head, and Helen saw that the pen had melted into dust through her fingers.

"What do you want?" she hissed at him, pulling her legs up onto the table and scooting back further. "What are you?"

"How many has she killed, professor?" This was a second voice, all the more terrifying to Helen. "There's been so many now, and she knows it. The deaths have been hidden by technicalities and lies, of course-on the record, I died in an animal tracking accident in Sumatra. Body torn to shreds. Easy enough excuse, when Lester got it all hushed away. My family accepted it."

"Stephen!" Helen gasped in surprise. The man nodded with a shrug-Helen would have drooled if she was prone to that sort of thing, or if the situation was even remotely comfortable.

"Not to mention that she killed me every possible way every day she was away," Cutter said. "You know, except for the whole shooting thing."

"Yeah, she left you alive and kicking for so long just to kill you when you saved her life." The corner of Stephen's mouth was quirked upwards in a wry grin. "Ironic? Not really, when you talk about Helen Cutter."

"Some of us she didn't even have to kill though, right, Stephen?" This new voice gave Helen a shiver up her spine; she was the one who created him, born into the new world by an accident in the past. He was behind Stephen, his arms crossed over his chest as he clicked his tongue disdainfully.

"Leek," she said, forcing her voice to drop from the octave it had risen to. "Leek, I'm on your side-save me from them."

"Oh, but why would he _ever_ want to do that?" a woman's voice asked. Helen turned to see, at Cutter's side, the woman who had fallen into the rabbit-hole and came out a singularly less remarkable person.

"C-Claudia?" Helen couldn't stop her voice as it rose again, almost a squeak-but she didn't have time to hate herself for her fear.

"You murdered me the most impossible way," Claudia Brown said, her fingers mingling and then meshing with the professor's. "You ripped me out of the world and replaced me with a horrible copy of myself. She looked the same, but she was a different woman."

"You stole my face." Helen turned to another voice-a woman she knew so little of, it was amazing how vital a role she played within her plans. How amazing that she would wear the face of this stranger. "I was walking to work. You kidnapped me, and used my face to create a hologram. Then you just decided to off me."

"Eve," Helen breathed. She had just been mapping out her plans, to use Eve's face and infiltrate the ARC after a short sojourn in the future…

"And it all culminates, doesn't it?" Nick said darkly, shaking his head. "The story continues, until Helen Cutter gets her final wish, breaks the final floodgate and destroys all humanity."

"I will succeed." Helen's voice was strained as she backed away atop the table, her fingers searching for the security alarm.

"Looking for this?" Claudia held up something and Helen's eyes widened-it was the security switch, with pieces of the tabletop still stuck to it and wires sticking out the bottom haphazardly as though it was just ripped out of the table.

"Ah-yes," Helen said nervously.

"You're afraid of _us_, Helen," Stephen said. "How will it be when you have the entire world vying for your blood?"

"Leave me alone-" Helen began, but her final word was drawn into a scream as the others approached her.

The soldiers found Helen face-first on her desk, arms splayed out and eyes open but seeing nothing. They stood, stone-still, awaiting her instructions, instructions that would never again come to them through the cold, dead lips.


End file.
